


Coffee Shop in the Crystal City

by mysterytour



Category: Stargate - All Media Types, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Coffee Shops, Comedy, Elsewhere Fic, Fluff, Memes, Tok'ra (Stargate), Why are Tok'ra against doors anyway? So weird, a stupid piece of nonsense, elsewhere, gifs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:22:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21972784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysterytour/pseuds/mysterytour
Summary: An elsewhere fic about a Tau'ri lady who works in a coffee shop in the Tok'ra city and likes memes.
Kudos: 6





	Coffee Shop in the Crystal City

**Author's Note:**

> Slight body horror. Mid 2000s memes you'd rather forget.

‘Well um, I suppose I’ll have…’

Carol wrestled her face into a neutral expression. It was the same every damn day: at six am sharp, Malek/Stefan would arrive and the coffee shop and get in line. There wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that they’d have their order straight by the time they got to the counter. Malek took his coffee black with peppermint. Stefan, on the other hand, was a chai kind of guy. ‘Perhaps you could try alternating days?’ Carol suggested with a customer friendly smile. Brian, her suprvisor, busied himself cleaning tables.

‘Stefan is very disorganised.’ Malek explained, as if that was any kind of explanation.

‘How about something you both like, like bubba tea?’

‘Oh, we couldn’t possibly have it in the morning.’

According to Gurinder (who usually worked night shifts) Stefan and Malek regularly rolled in at 2am on what amounted to the Tok’ra version of Friday night baked out of their fucking minds and with a hankering for bubba tea. Malek had a real stick up his ass; he was not the kind of guy you could imagine getting stoned and Carol wouldn’t have believed it unless she’d seen it for herself (when she was out for Gurinder’s hen party, no less).

‘I suppose…. I’ll have…’

Carol waited.

‘…black coffee with peppermint.’

Carol grabbed the peppermint extract.

‘Chai! Chai.’ Malek said, quickly.

Brian kept his head down.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes.’ Malek most definitely did not look sure.

‘Chai it is.’ Carol poured the spice mixture into a cup and stuck it under the steamed milk tap, hoping that they didn’t change their minds mid flow.

Malek thanked her courteously and left for his shift.

Brian scooched around the counter, cotton rag and D10 in hand. ‘You know what the problem is?’ He whispered in Carol’s ear, ‘Two guys, one cup.’

Carol stifled a squeak.

Garshaw stepped up to the counter with a face that said I’d like to speak to the manager. ‘I don’t know what you find so amusing, but I ask that you remain professional and take my order at once.’

Carol did as she was told, cheeks burning.

Goddamnit, Brian.

The Crystal City did not have Twitter, but if it did, Carol would have done a thread about Malek’s beverage preferences and Brian’s comment illustrated with many gifs. It probably would have gone viral and everything.

Hilary Clinton saying ‘these are difficult decisions’.gif

Six months after the President announced the existence of the Stargate Programme, two weeks after she was made redundant and forty five minutes after her husband left her because they’d ‘grown apart’ (which they had, but she was still pissed as hell) Carol Wan submitted her application for a work placement. After all— why the fuck not? What did she have to lose? When she got the acceptance letter she sold the crap she didn’t need on eBay, put her furniture in storage and headed up to Colorado.

Stargate Command was a stifling military installation buried under a mountain. Absolutely everything was grey and lit with horrible florescent bulbs, but whatever because it housed an interstellar portal for crying out loud. Orientation was lead by a guy who’s name Carol forgot because she was distracted by his impressive guns and sparkly blue eyes. Carol filled out some more forms and chatted with the other migrants before (Dave? Darren?) sent them packing through the Stargate.

On the other side, Carol stepped into the light of two brand new suns—one white, one violet— in a blue-green sky. The Stargate stood at the end of a square at the heart of a city made entirely out of crystal. The towers sparkled like the perfume bottles on her gran’s dresser. The group was met by a woman with a gum-exposing grin, who escorted them to their accommodation. ‘This is your room,’ she said, showing Carol a white chamber as though chiselled out of ice. ‘I’d say enjoy your assignment but… well, it is what it is.’

Carol’s new life was weird as shit in many ways and utterly mundane in others. The galaxy needed coffee. Lots and lots of coffee. How else would anyone get to work on time? The Crystal city alone had thirty coffee shops, fifteen run by the good people of Earth, most of which were independent franchises and only two of which were Starbucks. Carol worked at the international Tau’ri shop on Mainsquare.

Garshaw took her earl grey and brioche to the table in the window, where she quietly read from a a tablet.

As soon as she left (pastry covered napkin tucked neatly inside her cup) Carol shrieked, ‘Jesus wept, Brian, why? WHY?’

‘Oh my god what if she complains to Soha? Again!’ Brian wheezed.

Carol laughed so hard she choked on her saliva.

Jennifer Lawrence snorting into her drink.gif

A little while later, the phone (not really a phone, but that’s what they liked to call it) rung and Carol answered. It was the owner, Soha. And Soha was not impressed. ‘Tell Brian,’ she told Carol, ‘if I hear one more word from Garshaw, I’ll throw him through the Stargate so fast it’ll make his head spin.’

Brian got on the phone. ‘Garshaw is destined to complain regardless of who you put behind the counter—it’s written in the stars.’

‘I know that, of course’ Soha harumphed, ‘but I have to tell her I’ll do something about it, and I always do what I say I’ll do. Behave yourself, Mr Segal and please ensure that your staff behave themselves also.’

‘Yes, Mrs Maherzad.’ Brian said, dutifully.

The line went dead. Brian and Carol laughed their asses off.

The rest of the shift was a bore. Some Earth tourists came in and asked Carol if she’d met Beyonce yet (she hadn’t), and only one mug got stolen. By the time Carol got out of there, Sol 3 (the violet one) was setting and Sol 1 (the orange one) was rising. The sky was dirty brown at one end and deep purple at the other. Carol threw on her coat and took out her iPod. She was already heading down the north thorough-fair by the time she’d untangled her headphones. The street was full of workers going home and people in iridescent pinks and purples going out. Friends held hands. Lovers hung fromone another’s shoulders. Birch saplings shimmered in the breeze. It was quite a nice city, actually. No: it was spectacular. And Tok’ra weren’t so bad, either. Well, some of them new how to order coffee.

‘… su casa, Shakira, Shakira,’ Carol mumbled to herself as her apartment block rose before her.

Carol whipped her coat off as soon as she got through the door and strode. She crossed the spacious foyer and slipped into the stairwell.

Oh balls.

The nice old man who lived three doors down (well, thresholds—doors were against Tok’ra sensibilities) was belly up on the floor. Carol pulled out her earbuds. She couldn’t remember his name, despite the fact that he told her a stupid joke every time he saw her.

Was he dead?

Suddenly, his eyes opened and flashed brightly. Carol yelped.

‘Carol…’ The symbiote’s voice rattled in his throat. ‘Yeroen… he’s gone.’

Carol’s heart pounded. ‘I’ll… I’ll go get someone.’

‘There’s no time… please.’

‘Oh god, you’re not asking me…’

Yeroen’s eyes rolled back in his head. Seconds later the symbiote slithered out of Yeroen’s mouth in a trail of mucus and plopped onto the floor with a wet pat. Carol covered her mouth and did her best not to puke. The symbiote mewled and looked at her with faintly glowing eyes. Because she couldn’t think of anything else to do, and because they looked so sad and helpless, Carol took them into her hands. Ew. Gross. The symbiote mewled again.

Fuck. Fuckfuckfuckfuckityfuck.‘Okey-dokey,’ Carol took a deep breath. ‘bottom’s up, I guess.’

Larren gasped. It had been nearly a hundred years since he’d inflated a new set of lungs. Two of his siblings, medics (whose names he couldn’t remember), knelt beside him with furrowed brows. His throat—no— the throat belonging to the woman who lived three thresholds down and whose name he could never remember, smarted badly. Except now he knew her name: Carol Wan. Tau’ri. Fairly recently divorced. Larren remembered the joke Carol had heard earlier and wanted to understand it. Instinctively, he reached further into her brain, forging synapses.

Oh, god.

Oh GOD.

‘How are you, Larren?’ One of the medics asked, with a look of concern.

‘Jesus Christ on a bike,’ Larren grasped her wrists. His eyes bulged. ‘what is wrong with these people?’

That one woman from Game of Thrones screaming.

Dot gif.


End file.
